THE LAST LAP	267
tired brain with the plague-marked houses in Stuart
London made me think the place unhealthy, and it
was one of the curious results of complete exhaustion
that the mind couldn't separate fantasy from reality.
The place was only empty because all the men were
away on their farms except the headman, who would
do as little for us as he could, but to this day I find it
hard to realise that the village was not emptied by
disease.
We had to sit on our boxes for more than three
hours before the men returned and we could find huts
for ourselves. As for my servants, I could find nothing
for them; they had to sleep in the open cookhouse
round their fire, and they got little sleep, for they
were afraid of wild beasts, particularly of elephants
and leopards. We were in leopard country, every
road into Tapee had been guarded by a trap, wooden
boxes in which a kid could be tied with a drop-door
weighted with bundles of shells.
There was  no longer enough whisky for sun-
downers and we rationed the last half-bottle in tea-
spoonfulls, which we drank in our tea. As we ate
our supper some kind of trial was being held by the
carriers in front of Amedoo as judge. They sat before
him in two long lines and each witness in turn stated
his case with the gestures and intonations of accom-
pEshed orators. It was still going on when I went to
bed at eight, and I learned the next day from Mark
that the trial was not over till midnight.
I never properly knew what it was all about, but
early next morning Kolieva, who had once been my
favourite hammock-man with Babu, came to me as I
sat in the village kitchen waiting for breakfast and